Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Nick Ashford, Jerry Leiber and the Soundtrack of a Multiracial America

Nick Ashford, Jerry Leiber and the Soundtrack of a Multiracial America

Mark Naison

When I discovered that two of the greatest rock and roll songwriters of all time, Nick Ashford (of the duo Ashford and Simpson) and Jerry Leiber ( of Leiber and Stoller) died in a single day, my first impulse was to go into mourning. As someone who grew up in Brooklyn in the 50’s and came of age as a civil rights and anti-war activist at Columbia University in the 60’s, I looked to songs that they had written ( from “Hound Dog” and “Stand By Me” to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Solid as a Rock”) as part of the sound track of my life and markers of my personal and political evolution.

But after thinking about their music, not only on its impact on tens of millions of people in my generation, but on the cultural politics their songwriting reflected, I think it’s important to understand that they were figures who in their own way helped redefine race in United States by creating a sonic universe which people of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds could enter, and find joy and meaning within.

It is easy to forget how unique this multiracial sonic universe, which evolved with the popularity of Rock and Roll in the middle 1950’s and lasted through the late 60’s, was in its historic moment. There are certain songs, most, but not all of them performed by Black artists, most involving themes of love and loyalty, which young people in every single part of the country, regardless of racial or cultural background, adopted as their own personal anthems and retain powerful associations to this day.

At a time of unprecedented economic growth, when unions were strong, wealth was far more evenly distributed than it is now, and working class people of all racial backgrounds strode through America with a confidence and optimism that would be unimaginable today, songwriters, record producers, radio dj’s and singers managed to capture that optimistic spirit by adapting rhythm and blues- a music forged in postwar urban black communities to a broader youth market. And while the driving impulse here was commerce, the music that resulted had a joyous spirit that cut across racial boundaries more than anything the nation had ever seen.

But it could only work because some of those boundaries were being crossed in daily life. In cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit, young blacks and whites not only found themselves working in the same factories, they sometimes attended the same high schools and lived in the same housing projects. And if the majority of people who moved through these integrated settings kept to their own cohort, there were enough people who crossed those boundaries in friendship, and occasionally in love to understand that there were some very real commonalities in material aspirations and cultural values. Young people in those times, irrespective of their racial backgrounds, wanted cars, and houses, good jobs and good times, and hoped, at some point after they had their fun, to find love and marriage!

Songwriters like Nick Ashford and Jerry Leiber knew this. They were part of a generation of young people who believed in “love” ( however gendered their definition of that was) and who believed that their economic prospects were promising enough to imagine love leading to marriage. That deindustrialization, war, and stubbornly persistent racism might undermine that possibility, and that women’s empowerment would render the ideal problematic, goes without saying, but for a good ten year period, a whole generation raised in those heady times was emotionally entranced by the vision of love and loyalty put forward in songs like” Stand By Me” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.

Look at the lyrics of each of these songs:

Stand by Me

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
Oh I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand by me

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

If you need me, no matter where you are
No matter how far, don’t worry baby
Just call my name, I’ll be there in a hurry
You don’t have to worry
Cause ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley
Low enough, ain’t no river wide enough, to keep me
From getting to you baby

These heroic visions of devotion and loyalty might elicit laughter today, but they were as much part of what it meant to be young in the early and middle 60’s as the draft, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Star Spangled Banner, and wherever you go, whether it be the Deep South, the Pacific Northwest, New England or the Great Plains or the Mesabi range, you put these songs on for a 60 and over group, irrespective of race, and it will being a moment of reverence, not just for lost youth, not just for broken ideals, but for passions that emerge when you live life to the fullest

That these two songwriters, one black, one white, could capture those feelings with such perfect pitch, with such startling universality, reflected not just as astute reading of a moment in American history, but the creation of a cross racial sensibility that had never existed before and might never quite exist again in exactly the same form.

Whatever this nation has become, since that time; whatever changes in gender and economics have rendered the ideals and visions captured in those songs problematic, at least for our time, the song captures a time when people dared to dream that love and loyalty were possible and that they could dream together across racial and cultural boundaries in a way that their parents generation could never imagine.

About Me

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports.
The Bronx African-American History Project, Dr Naison's most recent venture, was launched collaboratively with the Bronx Historical Society in the Fall of 2002 . Since that time, Dr Naison has conducted over one hundred and fifty interviews with African-American professionals, community activists, business leaders and musicians who grew up in Bronx between the 1930's and the 1980's. . Naison is currently working on two books related to the BAAHP, a collection of oral histories and a memoir written by Allen Jones entitled "The Rat That Got Away."
When not doing historical research, Naison likes to play tennis, golf and basketball, and make periodic forays into the media. He has appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, the Discovery Channel's Greatest American Competition (as Dr King's advocate), and on the Dave Chappell Show, where his "performance" has been preserved on that show's Second Year DVD.